


The Equation

by Orockthro



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asexual Hermann Gottlieb, Asexuality, F/M, Hermann Gottlieb Has MS, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, no kaiju
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 19:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: The fake brain-- presuming it actually is fake-- pulses on the tarp laid out on the living room floor.“Dr. Geiszler, do you feel it is in any way appropriate to be doing... whatever it is that you’re doing... in shared space? For god’s sake, there is goo dripping onto the carpeting!”11:41 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: Did you know your one night stand is a mad scientist? It turns out his experiments are even more inconceivable than I previously thought. You’re condemning your beloved husband to live with a lunatic.11:48 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: I told u you’d like him :) :)(Or, Vanessa goes to Paris for an extended modeling contract and sets Hermann up with a roommate while she is away-- for his own good. She just maybe didn't disclose quite everything, that's all.)





	The Equation

**Author's Note:**

> This fic hit me like a train. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)  
> Deep thanks to Saathi1013 for the betaing. All mistakes are my own.

“Here,” Vanessa says, and drops a single, fluttering piece of paper into his lap. It’s not even a full piece of paper, but a half sheet, ripped edge fuzzy along the fold. 

Hermann squints at it, then at her, his eyes not quite cooperating this morning, pulsing painfully in their sockets. Vanessa is only half dressed and her hair is still wrapped, and the morning light is creeping through the apartment blinds in the kitchen, bathing her with a supernatural glow.

“I picked that up last night for you,” she says, turning back to her fried egg. The smell makes Hermann’s stomach roil, but she’s always been a breakfast person, just like he’s always not been. 

He picks the paper up gingerly. “Dear god, did you find it in a restroom?” It’s dingy and the corners are tacky with... something, and it reeks of cigarette smoke. Then he reads it. ”I have no idea what this is referring to.”

Vanessa flips her egg and smiles at him. It occurs to Hermann, watching her watch him, that she loves him. In the last five years of his life, he can’t think of anyone else who truly has. 

“Hermann, darling, you need to move out.”

\--

Vanessa is two years older than Hermann, and several orders of magnitude more beautiful. They met in December of 2013, in the cold and wet and damp of Cambridge-- Hermann there for a fellowship in Mathematics, and Vanessa there for her last round of prosthetics fitting with the research group funding her experimental foot designs. He was fascinated by the designs she made for her foot and lower leg (beautiful in ways he didn’t understand, just like her, and clever in ways he did understand, just like her), and she was fascinated by him.  They married in February. 

They eloped, and Hermann only told one sibling in the perfunctory manner of his nature in an email stating:

_ Dear Karla, _

_ I’m writing to update you of my contact information. I will be residing in a new apartment henceforth with Vanessa Gottlieb, nee Williams. Our new mailing address is enclosed. _

_ I hope your studies are progressing well, and I look forward to reading future articles you publish. _

_ Yours, _

_ Hermann Gottlieb _

\--

Vanessa is, to everyone’s surprise but Hermann’s, brilliant as well as beautiful. And it means that at 31 her modeling career is taking off, not crashing to an end. 

“I’m heading to Paris for awhile. You’ll hate it there. And you do terribly on your own.”

It’s true. He hates Paris. He’s gone with Vanessa before, and every time he ends up miserable in a cupboard-sized hotel room eating food that is too rich and makes him nauseated. He has no appreciation for art, and none-still for culture, and the whole city is devoted to those two pursuits and nothing else. 

“I do not do terribly on my own, I’m perfectly functional.”

She rolls her eyes. “Last time I came the walls had been papered over with equations and you hadn’t left the house in two weeks.” 

Hermann starts to defend the behavior, but gives up. “And so moving in with a perfect stranger is your solution?”

She plants a kiss on his cheek, and it smells like egg and her perfume mixed together. It ought to be revolting, but it isn’t. 

“I met him last week, he’s a fun guy. He’s just looking for a flat share for awhile. If you rent our flat out while I’m away, you’ll even have your own pin money.”

“I can’t believe you’ve just used that phrase.”

\--

It is 2018. There are no kaiju.

\--

The ‘fun guy’ is named Newton Geiszler and is, coincidentally, also of Germanic origin. He is not ‘fun.’ He speaks in run-on sentences, has tattoos, and opens the door to his flat wearing what looks like a random assortment of clothing that had been laying on his floor.

“Hi, hi! Come in, come in, sorry about the mess, Vanessa said you’d be coming by to look at the room, I’m really happy you found the place.”

The place is the lower level of a two flat little building about four miles away from the warm and clean apartment Hermann shares with his wife. Dr. Geiszler’s apartment is warm, but so far from clean it is appalling. Hermann spots no less than five mugs strewn about, heaps of random and unlikely-to-be-clean clothes, and what looks suspiciously like an ongoing biology experiment near the kitchen sink.

“You live like this?”

“Yeah, it’s awesome isn’t it? The owner doesn’t charge for water or heat, either. It’s a steal. So you in? Vanessa said you’d be in.”

Despite his German name, the man speaks with an American accent, which Hermann finds almost as galling as the state of the apartment itself. 

“And how do you know Vanessa, remind me?”

Geiszler’s face lights up. “She’s wicked awesome, isn’t she?” Awesome appears to be his go-to word. He’s always found the American lack of vocabulary fascinating, and this is a particularly illuminating example of the phenomenon. “She was helping us with some design shit for the band.”

Because of course there was ‘a band.’

“I’m afraid it won’t do,” Hermann says. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Gieszler, but--”

“Man, if you’re gonna be weird and formal, at least get it right. I have two doctorates. But seriously, just call me Newt.”

Hermann pauses. “You have two doctorates? In what, exactly?”

\---

Hermann agrees to move in, not because he wants to, but because he can’t stop thinking about Dr. Geiszler. The man is an absolute conundrum. He says as much to Vanessa when he returns to their lovely home that he will miss almost as much as her, and she laughs.

“I knew it. I’ll call, and you can tell me how it’s going. Just actually keep your cell charged, okay, love?” 

He grumbles. The blasted thing is forever a nuisance-- the commercial technology is absolute garbage-- but he agrees it is more convenient than letters these days. And he will miss her voice so much, it is a gift to be able to hear it at the touch of a button. 

It is not the first time they have done this-- Vanessa’s work often takes her to Milan or Rome or New York, and often for months at a time. It is as much a part of their relationship as their time together, this passing of time apart. And lately she worries about him being lonely while she is gone, and while he would prefer to find it overbearing and unnecessary, the part of him that is a mathematician and knows the universe to be made up of fundamental truths finds her hypothesis to be not completely unsound. 

The last time, when she went to Rome for six and a half weeks, was deeply isolating. He works for the university here, true, and he has colleagues in the literal sense. But he is the sole occupant of his research lab-- it would appear theoretical mathematics applied to engineering problems are a dying art, and his lab is utterly uninteresting to graduate students-- and so he trudged to an empty lab where he worked alone, and then back to the empty house where Vanessa’s missing presence was palpable. In the end, by the time she came home, it had made more sense to simply never leave the house.

“Yes, fine,” he says, and fishes around their bedroom for his suitcase to pack. “I’ll be sure to inform you of how absolutely miserable I am while you’re away.”

She shoves him playfully. “You always did know how to make me blush.”

\---

They don’t have sex that night. They’ve never had sex. Hermann loves Vanessa for her mind and her wit, and her body is as foreign to him as anyone else’s. She loves him and has learned not to mind this, and delights in telling him of her extra-marital conquests. He finds a deep and perverse pleasure in the exchange of information and encourages it-- he likes knowing that she is appreciated.

“This guy,” she said last week, pointing at a photo on her phone screen after dinner and when they were curled together on the couch.

“Seriously?” Hermann asked. The image is hard to make out, taken in the dim and chaotic moment where he is existing from the stage holding an electric guitar. The majority of his features are a blur, but Hermann can tell that he’s smiling and walking towards the camera-- towards Vanessa.

“Yeah. He’s hilarious. You’d like him I think. He’s got two doctorates-- organic chemistry and applied biology, maybe? I can’t remember. We were talking about his band mostly. He didn’t even shut up when he was eating me out.”

\---

Hermann kisses his wife goodbye at 9:30AM on a Tuesday, and catches a cab to Dr. Geiszler’s flat with his suitcases at 10:00 o’clock. He pays the man, struggles to shift his suitcases off the curb and onto the concrete garden in front of the flat while managing to not drop his cane, and wishes-- already-- that Vanessa were here. 

“Oh, hey, man,” Dr. Geiszler says when he opens the door and lets Hermann into his temporary new home. “Sorry, just woke up. This all your stuff then?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” Hermann grates out. His legs feel like jello today and he can already feel a tremor starting in his hands. Summer has hit Cambridge, and the heat does nothing good for him. “Don’t you work?”

Dr. Geiszler grins at him. “Summer break, baby. I teach, but I’ve got the summer off to prep and do research.”

Hermann frowns and tries to figure out if he’s seen Dr. Geiszler at the university before in any capacity, but he draws a blank. Social interactions have never been his strong suit anyhow. “I see.” He has a fundamentally negative opinion of professors who do not also spend significant periods of time in the lab. In his case, he’s managed to negotiate for a full research position, devoid of any teaching at all. 

“So this room is yours,” he says as he helps Hermann pile his things through the flat’s entryway. “I’m the one just down the hall, and the bathroom’s at the end. Kitchen is totally up for grabs, and the living room is first come first serve.”

Hermann surveys the landscape with the same eye for filth as he did when he was first given the tour. It’s been tidied somewhat-- the spare socks have been removed from the crevices in the couch in the living room, and the rug has been straightened so that it is at least not a tripping hazard. It is livable, if considerably more disgusting than he would prefer.

“Vanessa said you’d be good for rent, and I just need it by the first day of the month.”

Hermann suddenly realizes several things at once: one, this is absolutely and without a doubt the man that Vanessa most recently slept with and found so endearing; two, this man has no idea that Hermann and Vanessa are married.

Hermann smiles. “Oh, she said that, did she?”

Dr. Geiszler freezes-- a prey animal realizing something is looming above. “Uh. Yeah? Is there a problem? I’m open to some bartering, too, if cash is tight. Last year a guy paid me in chickens, I shit you not. And boy did  _ they _ shit.”

“Oh no,” Hermann says, “I’m sure we can work something out. After all, Vanessa said so, didn’t she.”

\---

She picks up on the third ring.

“Hello, darling.”

He’s laid flat on his temporary bed, still fully clothed and with his shoes on, but a pillow’s stuffed under his knees to take some pressure off his lower back. The door to his room in Dr. Geiszler’s flat is firmly shut and he’s been alone in here for the last half hour, pacing back and forth.

“Oh, you wonderous wench, don’t you ‘hello, darling’ me. I cannot believe what you have done.”

She laughs. It’s not quite translated correctly through the speaker of his phone, all crinkly and harsh, but enough of it comes through that is so quintessentially  _ her _ that he almost immediately feels quieted and calmed. She is a cruel mistress, and he loves her endlessly. 

“So you’ve figured it out?”

“Have I figured what out, exactly? That you’ve arranged to have me spend two months with a horrendous creature who dissects cow bladders in the bathtub because you find him attractive and slept with him last week? I have half a mind to check into a hotel for the entire time on your credit card. Heaven knows that the world pays more for your talent than mine.”

“They also often think I’m a sex worker. No one assumes that of you.”

He wishes, desperately, that she were here laying next to him and not in Paris being fitted for a ball gown cut to show off the latest design of her leg. They worked on this one together, making sure the engineering would not just ‘hold up’ which was the standard of commercially available prosthetics, but  _ excel.  _

He misses holding her.

“Does it really bother you that much?” She asks, and finally he can hear the worry in her voice. The same worry that brought her to the point of arranging this whole debacle. “It’s just that I know Newt. He’s a good guy. I know that with you both there, I don’t have to worry.”

Hermann closes his eyes and imagines a life where he doesn’t have her, and it is so inconceivable that he opens them before a second has passed. “For you, my love, I will bear it. How is Paris?”

“Oh, fine. I’m being fawned over, of course. If I accepted every drink offered I would be so completely hammered by now it’s not even funny. You should be jealous.”

He laughs this time, and it feels good. “Oh, should I be?”

“Nah,” she says back. “They can’t manage abstract mathematics, so you’re stuck with me.”

\---

Hermann exits his room around supper time and is bombarded with the sight of Dr. Geiszler bent over what looks like a very large brain. 

“Oh, hey, Herms. This is all fake, don’t worry about it. No actual elephants were harmed in the making. Promise.”

The fake brain-- presuming it actually is fake-- pulses on the tarp laid out on the living room floor. 

“Dr. Geiszler, do you feel it is in any way appropriate to be doing... whatever it is that you’re doing... in shared space? For god’s sake, man, there is goo dripping onto the carpeting! Dare I even ask what possessed you to do this here and not at the University?”

Dr. Geiszler gets a sheepish look on his face, half-hidden behind his glasses. “Um. Yeah... maybe not asking is good?”

Hermann growls, steps carefully over the mess, and heads into the kitchen to make his tea. “Please just tell me you never invited Vanessa back here.”

There’s a squelch, and he looks back to see a pair of pliers sticking out of the frontal lobe of the brain. “Nah, dude. She’s too, like, pure for this world. Including my world. We hooked up in my buddy’s car.”

Hermann cannot decide if this is a relief or not, and so he just takes a deep breath through his nose, fetches his tea, and says, “Good day, Dr. Geiszler. I’m going to my office and won’t be back until evening. Please do not get whatever horrific substance that is on any of my things.”

He takes his cane and his briefcase and walks as quickly as he trusts himself out the door. As he closes it, he hears a frustrated shout emanate from behind him.

“Dude, just call me Newt!”

\---

“And then, you won’t believe this, he left a cup of pig blood in the bathroom under the vanity light, because, and I quote, he wanted to see how it coagulated under humid conditions, and  _ he didn’t think I’d mind _ .”

“Uh huh.”

Peter is not an ideal audience, but Hermann is desperate. He’s never had a wide variety of friends (or really any friends), and fully accepts that this is a product of his acerbic nature and short temperament. But these are aspects of himself he does not wish to change, and thus his situation is one he feels compelled to bear. Vanessa loves him, he has a career in which he is allowed to do the mathematical work he craves, and that is enough.

Except when it isn’t. 

Vanessa is at a shoot all day and he’s texted her three times already, only to get a smiley face back and a quick:  _ busy luv talk ltr  _ back in the the perverted language of abbreviated chatspeak.

Peter is nineteen and doing his undergrad at Cambridge. He’s here at 6PM on a Friday not because of any voluntary desire of his own, but because he’s desperate for the scholarship that Hermann’s college has offered to anyone willing to put up with him.

“Hold this,” he says to Peter, who absently takes the length of chalk shoved at him. “Now, do you have any idea what I’ve just done?” He points to the proof he’s spent the last five minutes writing out, and that takes up a solid eight feed of chalkboard space.

“Um... it’s about... gravity?”

Hermann stares at him. “Are you done?”

Peter blushes deep red. He’s of some variety of Scotts origin and even his ears turn pink. 

“Yeah. I mean, do you think your roommate is looking for a lab assistant maybe?”

Hermann lowers himself off the stepstool, takes the piece of chalk from Peter’s hand by force, and says, “You’d like that, wouldn't you. It’d be more  _ interesting. _ No. Come back tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s Saturday! I have rowing practice!”

“Of course you do. Fine. Begone.” He waves a chalk-covered hand in the general direction of the door and Peter disappears through it like a vapor. 

Alone in his lab Hermann looks at his equation and frowns. There’s something missing there. Vanessa might be able to spot it, but she hates it when he reads his work out to her over the phone-- she says it lacks that  _ je ne sais quoi _ element she so loves. 

He packs up and goes home, remembering almost too late that home today (and for the next two months) is a flat filled with pig’s blood and indeterminate brains.

\---

Somehow, Hermann survives an entire day before needing to interact with Dr. Geiszler again in any capacity more than the extremely brief. Their schedules do not overlap much, which Hermann finds to be a beautiful example of god. Hermann rises no later than six, and falls into a medicated sleep no later than ten. Dr. Geiszler appears to rise at some point between ten in the morning and noon, and sleeps approximately never. 

But on the fourth day, the amicable lack of contact screeches to a halt when, as Hermann is eating the single piece of plain wheat toast he must force down in order to take his morning medication, Dr. Geiszler bursts out of his disaster of a bedroom wearing a pair of Hawaiian shorts and nothing else and says, “It’s Saturday!”

Then he proceeds to make a full breakfast, complete with bacon and pancakes of a quantity enough to feed a small army, and eats approximately half of the lot before asking Hermann why he isn’t helping himself.

“Unlike some people, I prefer a simple breakfast,” Hermann says sharply. “Heavy foods make me feel slow.” Not to mention nauseated, but unlike some in this house, Hermann doesn’t feel the need to chronically overshare.

Dr. Geiszler shakes his head emphatically, and his thick glasses nearly slide off his nose. “What if, like, aliens attack or something. Not gonna stop for lunch if that happens, ya know? Nah, man, you have to fuel up for the day.”

“I assure you I do  _ not _ have to do anything I choose not to, including listen to you.”

Finally the man puts down his fork and his glass of disgusting-looking orange Tang drink, and looks at him. “What’s gotten into you?” 

“Whatever do you mean,” Hermann says, and counts out his medication into his week long pill organizer.

“Argh! Yes. That exactly. ‘ _ Whatever do you mean,” _ he parrots Hermann back at him in a voice clearly meant to insult. “I mean, why are you acting like an ass?”

“If you must know, you insufferable man, I miss my wife!”

Dr. Geiszler’s breakfast is forgotten and he stares at Hermann with an expression he can’t quite parse. One part puzzlement, and another, larger part fascination. Maybe with some horror thrown in there, too. Hermann has never been a particularly astute student of human emotion. 

“Wait. You’re  _ married _ ?”

“Yes. Now I’m going to work. Gooday Dr. Geiszler.”

“But it’s Saturday!”

Hermann slams the door on his way out.

\---

“How are things going, love?”

“I cannot believe you slept with him. Do you have any idea how disgusting that man is? He tried to feed me expired goldfish crackers last night.  _ Expired goldfish crackers. _ ”

She’s quiet on the other line. “I really thought you might like each other.”

“In what universe could I possibly like a man who sings terrible renditions of 90s songs in the shower and slathers all his food with maple syrup despite the applicability of that sauce.”

“Just try to like him. And tell him hi.”

Vanessa is quiet for awhile, and Hermann feels guilty for acting so selfish during their brief time together. “I will. I do miss you, Vanessa. Deeply.”

“I miss you too, Hermann. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Have you found any ridiculously good-looking male models to seduce in Paris?”

She snickers. “I love it when you call it ‘seduction,’ you make it sound so devious. But really, you’ll be okay?”

“I’m almost certain I’m supposed to be more concerned about you. But yes,” he says into the phone laying on his pillow beside him. He can hear his roommate banging about in the kitchen, followed by the horrific sound of his guitar. “Yes, I’ll be just fine.”

\---

It’s, of course, at this point-- when he’s determined to stay in the flat to keep Vanessa from ruining her career out of worry for him, and equally determined to despise his time with Dr. Newton Geiszler-- that he discovers the man is a genius. A batshit insane menace to the world, but his ideas, while bordering on ludicrous, are brilliant. 

It starts with a paper left out on the coffee table with rings of red bull stains warping the paper and haphazard purple pen marks strewn throughout, including one lurid drawing of a penis. Hermann reads it because he is a terribly nosy person-- that he oughtn’t doesn’t occur to him.

He makes it to the eleventh page before sitting down on the worn plaid couch, plans for tea forgotten entirely.

“Hey, Herms, have you seen-- ah, there it is, thanks!”

The paper is peeled from his hands, and if Dr. Geiszler notices the odd way Hermann is staring at him now, he is polite for the first time in their interactions and does not point it out. 

“Gotta go, see ‘ya later, yeah?”

“Yes,” Hermann says as Dr. Geiszler buzzes around shoving the paper-- the most interesting thing Hermann has read outside of mathematics in decades-- into his messenger bag like it is nothing more important than a candy wrapper-- and pops a crisp slice of cold bacon into his mouth on his way out.

“Yes,” he says again, once the house is quiet and empty. 

\---

Hermann is a scientist first, an engineer second, and a mathematician third. He will always follow the path of the scientific method, wherever it may lead, and has dutifully done so since learning of its existence as a small child. 

This is not the first time a hypothesis of his has proven to be incorrect-- or at the very least  _ less _ than correct. 

But somehow this time it feels all the more shocking: Dr. Newton Geiszler with his two PhD’s is actually a  _ good scientist. _

\---

11:41 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: Did you know your one night stand is a mad scientist? It turns out his experiments are even more inconceivable than I previously thought. You’re condemning your beloved husband to live with a lunatic.

11:48 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: I told u you’d like him :) :)

\---

Like many things in Hermann’s life, that which he doesn’t understand gets put into two boxes: either he examines it with the full force of his being until he unravels its mysteries, or he decides it is unworthy of his time and never looks at it again. Despite his desperate urge to file Dr. Geiszler into the second category, the man is impossible to ignore, predominantly because he  _ never shuts up. _

“Tell me about your wife, dude.”

“Pardon?”

“You dump that bomb on me, that you’re married. You can’t just leave me hanging there. I’m wayyy too curious a guy not to need all the deets. How come you’re living the bachelor life when you have a wife? You guys on the rocks-- big fight? Oh, I know, I bet she’s in the military--”

They’re on the horrible plaid sofa. The room he is renting doesn’t include a comfortable sitting chair, and his body protests continued use of the bed for anything other than a full horizontal lie down, and so he is forced to sit in the living room as it is pouring rain and he can’t abide the idea of getting into a cab to go to his office or the library when his joints are so displeased with him. 

And so this is his punishment.

“Please be quiet.”

Shockingly, it works. Geiszler stares at him, calculating, before harrumphing and turning back to his own laptop, fingers clicking away on the keyboard, the outer shell facing Hermann and forcing him to look at the horrible collection of stickers jammed onto the front. 

And then, because it was far too good to last, the intermitable man says, “Oh fuck,” his eyes glued to his computer screen and his fingers frozen on the keyboard between them. It is only through chance that he sees one of Vanessa’s recent modeling photos reflected and warped in the man’s glasses. 

The jig, as they say, is up. 

Hermann sighs. “Dr. Geiszler--”

“Oh, no, dude. Um. So your wife... ah... Vanessa... how to put this...”

Hermann considers letting him stumble over his own words, considers letting him put his own foot in his mouth, as he will inevitably do in just a handful of seconds. But Hermann prides himself on being a moral man. He puts Newton out of his misery.

“What shocks me is only that it’s taken two and a half weeks for this subject to be broached, not any actions that transpired between the two of you.” 

Newton because Hermann thinks that despite the man’s two doctorates, if they’re going to have this conversation, it needs to be man to man, without the trappings of status and respect and titles Hermann normally covets-- looks like he’s swallowed a lemon.

“She told me that she was in an open relationship. I...”

“And what? I appear too much of a prude for that to be true? Or is it that she’s married to  _ me _ that is the problem? Hm? Not what you expected for her? She’s beautiful, and I’m--”

The laptop slams shut.

“I’m going out, Herms, um. Hermann. I’ll, uh. I’ll see you later. Ah, yeah. Bye!” 

He’s out the door like a shot, his laptop shoved into whatever bag was nearest to him on the floor, and feet slipped into shoes without socks. It’s still raining-- harder than is typical for this bloody island-- and Hermann watches him leave silently. 

Because, he tells himself, he does not care.

\---

4:50 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: I’m afraid your little game has come to an end. I’m very likely to be evicted in the next 24 hours. 

4:50 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: Interestingggggg

4:50 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: What?

4:52 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: :shrugemoji: Nothing luv u just sound like it bothers u. Call me ltr, doing a shoot tonite can’t talk

\---

He leaves her a voicemail, because Hermann never could leave bloody well enough alone. 

“What do you mean, it sounds like it bothers me? The only thing that bothers me, my darling wife, is that now I’ll have to spend the next five weeks alone.”

He hangs up and then calls back.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

He gets up off the couch to make a pot of tea and then goes back into his room, waiting for the sound of Newton to come home and slam the door, but it doesn’t come, and eventually he must accept that the man is either dead in a ditch or having a night of the sort middle aged rock bands are wont to have, and falls asleep with his clothes still on.

\---

The next day is excruciatingly awkward. Newton spends as much time avoiding Hermann as humanly possible for two adult men occupying a relatively small flat. Any time Hermann enters a room, Newton exits it with decreasingly subtle excuses.

“Oh shoot I left my toast in the bathroom.”

“Sorry, Herms, I just need to go find the moth that’s been living in the kitchen.”

“I just... Yeah. I just need to be over there. Okay? Yeah.”

Eventually it reaches its breaking point, because all things do. That is something that Hermann knows all too well. In mathematics, the breaking point is the singular point from where a plane curve has two different tangents breaking from it. He is one, Newton Geiszler the other. The origin point, the center point of the graph that is them, Vanessa.

“Newton,” he says, when the man is unobtrusively exiting the room with the grace of a goat, “this is ridiculous. Vanessa did not lie to you, and I am not bothered by the two of you having a sexual relationship. Vanessa showed me your picture, even.”

Interestingly, the man’s face turns bright pink. 

“Wait, so  _ you knew _ ?”

“Ah. Yes.”

“And you  _ didn’t say anything?” _

Hermann is staring Newton down from the kitchen, and Newton returning the glare from the living room. It isn’t the first time Hermann has used his cane for dramatic effect, and he does so now, leaning on it with exasperation. 

“And what, pray tell, was I supposed to say? ‘Hello Dr. Geiszler, glad to meet you, hope you had a nice time fucking my wife, which room is mine again?’”

“Pray tell? Who the hell says pray tell anymore? And also, I thought you said you didn’t have an issue with this, huh?”

The toast Hermann was making to take his evening pills with pops out of the machine with perfectly terrible timing, and bounces onto the counter behind him. 

“I don’t have an issue with Vanessa’s sexual explorations, none at all. We’ve been married for four years now, coming up on five, and believe it or not this is a very established part of our relationship. What I do have an issue with is  _ you. _ ”

“Oh yeah? And what issue is that, exactly, huh, Hermann?” Newton says his name like it’s a curse, like something to be extruded out of his mouth rather than said simply in his desperately grating American accent. 

“My issue, Newton,” he says the man’s name back in the same tone of voice, “is that despite myself, I have actually found comfort in living here with you while she is away.”

The words are out of his mouth before he even knows what shape they’ll take, and as soon as they’re off his tongue he feels himself blanch.

This time he’s the one to leave the room, and Newton Geiszler is the one with his mouth hanging open behind him.

\---

“Vanessa?”

Her voice is a little rough, even over the phone. “Hermann, darling, sorry I couldn’t call you back last night. How are you doing?”

“Fine. How was the shoot?”

She sighs. “Also fine.”

They’re quiet for awhile. Hermann has the volume on the phone turned up so he can hear, just barely, her breath on the other end. It’s not anywhere close to being in bed with her, but it’s something, and today he needs that something. 

Eventually she speaks again. “I’m not going to make you talk about it, you know. If you want to, that’s up to you.”

“I know.”

“Good. I love you. Today a model passed out from heat exhaustion. It wasn’t a great day. We’re behind schedule now, and paparazzi got pictures they really shouldn’t have.”

A bolt of nervousness strikes his belly.

“Are you okay?” He hates not being able to hold her, not being able to make her iced tea or make sure she’s getting enough electrolytes. But mostly, he feels alone. He’s spent his whole life figuring out how to be alone-- first as freedom from his parents and siblings, and then freedom from his asinine fellow students, and finally as freedom from the incredibly dull minds of his fellow academics. He works in a lab by himself, publishes predominantly by himself, and refuses lecturing jobs because he dislikes large crowds. 

He should be better at being alone by now.

“I miss you,” she says over the phone. “That’s how I am. But like everything else in this life, this is only temporary.”

Hermann smiles as he drifts off to sleep, thinking as he always does after a conversation with Vanessa, of the beauty of numbers.

\---

When Hermann was young-- young enough that it is one of his first fully recalled memories-- he fell from a playground set and broke his leg. His parents were very forthright with him, even though he was only four or five, and told him that there was a chance, however small, that he might have to have a brace on his leg for the rest of his life, or use a cane. He might never be the same again.

He hadn’t needed a brace or a cane and he was right as rain when the cast came off. The bone had healed perfectly straight, and the doctors had been aghast that his father had worried a child with the low possibility it might not. 

Hermann remembers the lesson well, although it was not the lesson Lars Gottlieb intended. The lesson he discovered when he was twenty years old and looking at an MRI of his head, and the words “myelin sheath” and “multiple sclerosis” were said by a serious looking woman in a white doctor’s coat-- the first of his many neurologists.

Fate, was the lesson. 

Hermann is not religious anymore, and finds superstition to be drivel.

But he still believes in fate.

\---

“So, like, sorry.”

Hermann is bleary eyed and balanced on his cane with the practiced ease of a man who is as coordinated in the morning as a baby giraffe. He hasn’t even brushed his teeth yet, and Newton Geiszler is standing between him and the bathroom with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his ridiculous jeans. 

“I was kind of an ass. And so were you, for the record, it wasn’t _ just _ me in asshole land, that was one hundred percent a joint venture.”

It is far too early for this. “Newton, please get out of my way. We can discuss this once I’ve washed my face and properly dressed.”

But Newton stands his ground. 

“Nah, man. We’ve done way too much dancing around lately. Like, if you need to piss I won’t stop you, but we really should talk. I’ve seen you in your old man pyjamas before, it’s not that scandalous.”

Hermann likes his flannel pyjamas. Vanessa doesn’t make fun of him for them, she professes that she thinks they’re ‘cute.’

“Fine,” he says.

“Fine,” Newton says back.

And they stand there in the hallway, at an impasse. 

“Vanessa and I hooked up three times,” he says finally. “She’s... incredible, dude. You’re married to her, so you know, but I just want you to know that  _ I _ know that too.”

There’s an awkward pause Hermann starts to try to fill, but Newton continues: “And then I learn you guys are married, and it totally makes sense, right? ‘Cause in a weird way, you’re kinda incredible, too. Of course you guys are married to each other. I read your recent paper, the one that came out two months ago. It was brilliant, dude.”

“You read that paper? It’s not even your field.” It’s the one thing Hermann trusts himself to respond to at the moment. 

Newton shrugs. “Well, yeah. I always get the scoop on potential flatmates. But, like, then I read all your other articles, too. That was for fun. Some of what you talk about is bonkers, man. But, like, bonkers in the good way. If anyone is gonna punch through the space time continuum with math, it’s gonna be you.”

Hermann is oddly flattered. This conversation is not going as he predicted, and he feels the need to shift back to a stable ground he is more comfortable on. 

“Thank you, Dr. Geiszler. Your work is also bonkers... in the good way.”

And Newton beams. His entire face lights up in a nearly radioactive smile. “You really mean that, dude? Who am I kidding, of course you do. I’m a freaking genius. But thanks. Anyhow, what I’m trying to say is, like, I’m cool. If you’re cool.”

Hermann clears his throat. 

“I am, as you say, ‘cool.’”

“Great! There’s waffles in the kitchen. See ya later, Herms, I’m late for the band practice. Our new singer works third shift so all our schedules are fucked forever now.”

\---

7:34 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: Newton says ‘we’re cool’ 

8:31 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: Like, u and I are cool? Or the 2 of u are cool? There’s no context for this babe help me out

8:31 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. He read my papers. All of them. 

8:34 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: Damn. No one does that.

8:45 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: You do.

8:52 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: You’re my husband. And I like to keep my degree sharp. Newt is a guy I slept with a handful of times and your temporary roommate whose degrees are in completely unrelated fields.

8:55 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: What does it mean?

9:04 AM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: Hell if I know, love. 

\---

Hermann has never been a man who easily accepts ambiguity. The word makes him cringe like the word moist makes his sister Karla thwack him on the shoulder. He likes things in their appropriate boxes. He likes answers to questions that make sense, that can be proven both in the scientific sense and in the mathematical proof sense. He does  _ not _ like mysteries. 

Ergo, he does not like Newton Geiszler.

Except that he finds he does enjoy the man’s perplexing company. They never bore each other because between the two of them they have read, apparently, half the publications on the planet and a third of the novels. They’re each willing to strike an argument and dig deep into a conclusion, and in the four nights since Newton’s awkward ‘we’re cool,’ declaration, they have broken into four heated debates about the value of Einsteinian physics, the relevance of STEM in the modern world, the failure of the modern western school system, the crushing reality of global warming and the equally crushing reality that no one in power was going to do the truly necessary things to halt it, and the absolute beauty in true science.

This last one is the subject of tonight’s debate. Hermann has his cup of tea-- decaffeinated Earl Grey-- and Newton is sucking down a beer and nibbling on a pile of cold french fries, and they are seated on the plaid sofa. Or they are until one or both of them gets so worked up that they pace the room a few times, raving as they do so.

He does this with Vanessa, but her love of mathematics is one of many facets of her life. With Newton, science is his entire passion-- even music is mathematics, after all-- and it fills the room, and something inside of Hermann as well. 

“Hey, Hermann?”

“Yes? It must be something important, because you haven’t called me your atrocious nickname for me.”

Newton is seated on the sofa across from Hermann, and he sets his beer down on the coffee table. 

“Let me know if this is out of left field, but wanna make out?”

Hermann freezes. Because this is what always happens. He doesn’t attract too many suitors (Vanessa would giggle and say his choice of vocabulary for the act might be part of the reason why) but when he does, he is invariably struck immediately with a choice: explain his preferences to someone who may not understand them, or shut down the advance completely to avoid any chance of the other person feeling led on. 

Newton has a surprising level of empathy, through, and says without hesitation, “No big, no big! Just a thought anyhow. Not gonna, like, accost you in your sleep or anything.”

He wets his lips. “No, no I’m not concerned about that in the least.”

“Oh good. Cause that would suck. I mean, like, that you’d think of me as being a sleep accoster.”

He snorts, despite himself. And then dives in. “I actually don’t mind kissing. But that is as far as I prefer to take any experience.” 

He wonders, after the fact, why he didn’t simply decline the offer completely as he has done in the past. He eventually decides that the reason is very simple: Vanessa. This is a man whom Vanessa enjoys, and if there is one thing Hermann has learned in his nearly five years married to the woman, it’s that she has good taste. And in the nearly five weeks he’s spent living with the man, he’s much more worried about Netwon’s biology experiments than he is about the man not understanding him. 

Hermann trusts him.

It’s a shocking moment, when their lips touch. Newton is smiling, which makes the kiss far less than optimal, but it’s endearing and Hermann doesn’t much care. 

He pulls away. “You understand my terms?”

“Dude, that’s super fine. I like making out and I am not, like, such a horn dog I can’t deal with that being the end of the story. Relax and let’s kiss like teenagers, okay? For science.”

So they do.

\---

9:55 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 089: I can see why you like him. He is a good kisser.

10:04 PM (SMS) XXXXXXXX 223: OMG CALLING U NOW :D :D :D

“Vanessa?”

“Hermann, love, tell me  _ everything _ .”

He does, and it surprises him that it fills more than two sentences. He tells her about Newton’s lips, about the scruff of his five o’clock shadow, about how Hermann had grabbed onto his tie half way through the second kiss to keep their bodies close. 

“Oh my god, love, we’ve never shared before, this is so exciting!” 

And Hermann realizes, laying on his bed in Newton’s flat, that this could in fact be quite exciting. Or it could be monumentally complicated and terrible. 

He’s never liked ambiguity. He stares up at the ceiling for a few seconds before saying, “Is it?” Vanessa, I don’t know if--”

She cuts him off. “Oh hush, love. I’m home in a week and we can figure it all out then. Let me enjoy the image of you two making out for a little longer before you bring reality back in, yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now want to hear about how I stepped on the toes of the asshole who kept trying to touch my prosthetic?”

“More than anything.”

He falls asleep smiling.

\---

For a week, Hermann and Newt snog, argue, kiss, and debate. Amid this, there are pancakes, another round of pig blood experiments that leave Hermann so incandescently angry he microwaves the lot and kills the bacteria cultures outright, two terrible band rehearsals that happen at the flat, and one laptop ‘incident’ that resulted in a cracked screen. 

At the end of the week Hermann comes to the simultaneously pleasant and worrying conclusion that he not only has found living with Newton while Vanessa is away to be comforting, he has enjoyed living with the man period. 

He’ll miss this.

“Your wife is coming home today, dude! Look happier!”

He glares at Newton. “Dr. Geislzer, I am perfectly happy, this is just my face. Now will you please remove your hand from my shoulder at once?”

“Fine, who pissed in your coffee? Wait, which cup did you grab today? That might be a legit concern.”

Vanessa’s flight landed not an hour before, and he’s received numerous annoyed texts from her about the state of modern air travel, the subpar quality of all coffee ever brewed, and the apparent impossibility of humanity’s ability to properly queue. 

“She just got off the train from London and she’s getting a taxi,” he informs Newton after he deciphers her latest text. “She ought to be here in the next ten minutes.”

Newton stares at him for a moment, then cocks his head. “Wait. She’s coming  _ here?  _ You guys aren’t absconding to your domestic-bliss home to have sweet-sweet ‘I’ve missed you and haven’t seen you in almost two months’ sex? Wait are you going to do that  _ here?” _

Hermann closes his eyes, takes a long pull from his now-lukewarm tea, and sighs. “Newton, you are the most unbelievable man I have ever met.”

“Well, duh. I’m one of a kind.”

“Vanessa is coming here because she wants to see me and likely because she wishes to see you, too. We will not be having sex because I prefer not to. Now please, for the love of god, put away  _ that,”  _ he waves a loose hand at a tray of half-dissected invertebrates that’s been slowly desiccating on the coffee table for the last two days, “or you will find them in your bed.”

“Fine, whatever, just don’t have an aneurysm or something. You’re so high strung, man.”

“ _ I’m _ high strung? Who was it, Dr. Geiszler, who screamed when I removed his guitar from the sofa?”

“Hey, that thing is my baby, okay? And do you know you call me Dr. Geiszler when you’re pissed off? It’s like you only respect me when you want to strangle me or something.”

Hermann, who is alternating between obsessively checking his phone for new texts from Vanessa and, indeed, fighting the urge to strangle Newton, chokes out a frustrated noise and begins to pace the room. Everywhere he looks there is evidence of Newton’s slovenliness. Half empty cups that slipped by the cleaning extravaganza Hermann put the flat through, the endless arrival of new and vaguely dirtied clothes that find their ways to the backs of chairs, and mismatched lighting fixtures and bulbs of different wattages and temperatures that give the flat an eccentric glow.

He feels Newton’s hand on his shoulder and realizes he’s stopped his pacing.

“Seriously man, it’s gonna be fine. You’re already married to her, okay?”

If anything, it is Newton who has to worry. Vanessa liked him, sure, but their relationship was a passing thing, and other than Hermann, she doesn’t tend to seek out long term partners. Or even partners at all, beyond the one-night stand. But Hermann has shifted that, has instigated himself between them and added a complicating factor to the equation.

It’s so much easier to think of it as math. 

His phone buzzes.

“She’s outside,” he announces, and Newton is all abuzz and out the door barefoot to greet her.

“Fine,” he says to the empty flat as he watches the taxi pull up and Newton rush out to open the door for her. “It’s not as if she’s my wife or anything.”

But he ought not have worried. She smiles at Newton, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and walks up the concrete garden to pull Hermann into the embrace he has missed almost as much as air. 

She’s warm and smells vaguely of recycled air and the horror of modern air travel, but she is Vanessa and she smells of herself, too-- the oil she uses in her hair, the lotion she rubs onto her dry elbows, the sunscreen she religiously applies to her face. 

“Hello, love,” he whispers into her neck, and she holds him for another few minutes, and he holds her back. 

“Hello, love.”

Newton coughs behind them and he has apparently paid the cabbie, managed to get all of Vanessa’s substantial luggage collection in hand, and is waving at them to stop blocking the doorway to his own home.

“Come on lovebirds, move it, I’m not made of metal like some of you.”

And then, without preamble or preparation, they are all three of them in Newton Geiszler’s living room, staring at each other. 

Newton breaks the ice, because if there is one thing Newton Geiszler is good at it is blazing forward recklessly into conversations and situations where tact is required. 

“So you know I kissed Hermann, right? Like, a lot. Frequently.”

Hermann wishes desperately he could shrink into himself and never see the light of day again. “Of course she knows, Newton! I’m not some duplicitous letch, I told her immediately.”

“Well far be it from me to assume, dude! It’s not like there was any  _ secret relationship _ precedence or anything.”

“My marriage to Vanessa was hardly a secret, you simply never asked!”

Vanessa sits down, pops off her prosthetic, and rubs the end of her thigh where it attaches. They've engineered it as best as they can, worked with every material available, but even this version-- which is by far the best they’ve designed together-- is not perfect and after a long day of travel Hermann knows it bothers her. 

“Someone get me tea,” she says from the plaid sofa Hermann is now so intimately familiar with, “and then I want someone to kiss me. We can discuss this now or later, I don’t care, but I need tea. Or coffee? Newt, do you have real coffee? If you try to feed me Nescafe I will murder you with my leg.”

“Jesus Christ,” Newton whispers. “I forgot how awesome you are.”

Hermann kisses her. Then he kisses Newton.

\---

Later, on the plaid couch, Vanessa says, “Do you think we should talk about this, then? Because I don’t want to be the mediator, here.”

Newton, on her right and sprawled back, pleased with himself, says to the ceiling, “Do we have to? Or can we just make out forever?”

Hermann is the one who says, “We should. Things like this do need clear... boundaries.”

“Boundaries aren’t for rockstars, dude. Besides, what’s to define? It’s already so clear, right? You’re married to Vanessa. Vanessa bangs me. She kisses both of us. I kiss you. When she goes out of town you come cuddle with the great Geiszler and we’re both happy. Done.”

And Hermann has to say that the arrangement sounds quite fine to him, and judging from Vanessa’s next action, she agrees. 

\---

And then, a few months later, “Or, you know, we could just simplify things.”

\---

_ Dear Karla, _

_ The purpose of this email is to once again inform you of a change in address for myself and Vanessa. We are still in Cambridge as my work with the University is ongoing, but we have chosen to relocate to a different part of the city. _

_ I hope your studies continue to go well. Father has indicated you are progressing at a rapid rate that does not surprise me at all. I look forward to reading of your accomplishments. _

_ Yours, _

_ Hermann Gottlieb _

_ P.S. if you receive unexpected correspondence from a man named Dr. Newton Geiszler, also associated with the University, please ignore him.  _

\---

Newton is the one who finds the apartment. Hermann refuses to consider his old flat for anything other than potential demolition, but he does concede to allowing the plaid sofa to remain in existence. 

The flat is equidistant between the University and the train station to London-- perfect for all of them. It has good sun, good darkness, room for a chalkboard and Newton’s ridiculous pet projects in the den, and two bedrooms. Not enough room for band practice, but Hermann frankly considers that a plus, and Newton doesn’t seem to mind having to go off to his mate’s flats for that. 

When they move in, the following summer, Hermann writes “Gottlieb and Geiszler” on the outside of the mailbox flap for their flat and studies the cursive lettering. 

“Dude, no one writes like that anymore. The post guy’s not going to be able to read it.”

“Shut up, Newton, it’s perfectly legible.”

“The ‘z’ in my name looks like a freaking y!”

Newton is outside with him, his white shirt sleeves rolled up in deference to the summer heat, and a thin streak of sweat along the edge of his brow. There is no reason for him to be out here except that he enjoys Hermann’s company. 

“Shut up and kiss me,” he tells Newton. 

“Jesus Christ, I forgot you’re  _ both _ like this.”

\---

_ Fin. _

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


End file.
